While it is nice to occasionally have rain in order to spice up the tactical situation things a bit, there could be more types of weather than just that. Additionally it is odd that if it rains, it rains in the entire country.

So I've upgraded the weather system. Weather can now be local, meaning that at the same time, different sectors can have different weather. When and where weather happens is not controlled by the ini and SectorNames.xml, where you can enter specific weather chances for several weather types:

...
<rainchance>
chance that, if it rains, it will also happen in this sector
<sandstormchance>
chance that, if a sandstorm happens, it will also happen in this sector
<snowchance>
chance that, if it snows, it will also happen in this sector
-->
<SECTOR_NAMES>
<SECTOR>
<SectorGrid>A1</SectorGrid>
<szUnexploredName>Tropical</szUnexploredName>
<szDetailedUnexploredName>Tropical</szDetailedUnexploredName>
<szExploredName>Tropical</szExploredName>
<szDetailedExploredName>Tropical</szDetailedExploredName>
<sWaterType>2</sWaterType>
<usNaturalDirt>300</usNaturalDirt>
<usCivilianPopulation>2</usCivilianPopulation>
<rainchance>80</rainchance>
<sandstormchance>0</sandstormchance>
<snowchance>0</snowchance>
</SECTOR>
...

As the above excerpt from JA2_Options.ini tells you, the current weather types are:

Normal weather. When no particular interesting stuff is falling from the sky, besides the odd mortar shell or so.

Rain - water falling from the sky. Classic stuff

Thunderstorms - every rain shower has a chance to be upgraded to a thunderstorm, which is like a more boss version of rain. With lightning, louder sounds, higher penalties and everything.

Sandstorms - likely to happen in the desert, a severe sandstorms can be devastating. Visual range is drastically lowered, your mercs can hear almost nothing over the noise, and even breathing gets harder...

Snow. While this might seem odd in Arulco, this is a worthy addition (and might be used more widely in mods with a less tropical climate). I've added it to the mountains so we don't forget it exists.

While I also planned to add fog to swamps, I don't see how we could reasonably add the effect, so I didn't.

As you can see in the above video, there is now a new map display that shows you what weather currently happens where.

This is fully savegame compatible.

This has been added in r8253 & GameDir r2325. Using the new exe without the new GameDir data will cause BLOOD TO RAIN FROM THE SKY, AND NOT IN A FUN KIND OF WAY.

[Updated on: Sat, 18 June 2016 23:41]

Saren threw his head back and screamed in impotent fury, before falling to his throne, head in his claws, trembling in horrified disbelief.

Then he heard a faint chime as Sovereign subscribed to her ECHO channel.

If you want, you can donate to me. This will not affect how and what I code, and I will not code specific features in return. I will be thankful though.

To add Swamp Fog effects, you might try looking at modifying the tile lighting values globally for the sector via the same method that Lightning/Thunderstorms use. Altering RGB values and luminosity may give the desired ambiance.